Partition won't mount after system crash and reboot

[mongobongo]

So, im running OSX Leopard on my Macbook Pro and I have a mobile hard-drive attached. My bittorrent client, Azureus, is likely accessing one of the three partitions on the external drive when, for some reason, my system hangs. After a while i I just hold down the power button to force a restart.

After it starts up everything works fine, except that the partition that was in use wont mount, although the other two will without problem.

All the partitions show up in disk utility. If i try to mount the troublesome partition from within disk utility, I get a dialogue box saying the mount failed and I should try first aid. When I try to repair it with "Verify disk", it tells me that the volume "appears to be ok".

Any advice on how I can access the partition and maybe salvage some of the files is greatly appreciated!

 

[heppy]

Bad News

I'm afraid to tell you that from my experience your partition is probably dead. I had the same thing happen to me except it was on the main system drive -system froze, hard reset and then nothing. Tried a number of rescue programs and none worked. You may be luckier but I think it's stuffed.

 

[mongobongo]

that's odd, because usually, I always download to my system drive, and I've had to force reboot like that countless of times, without this ever happening before.

what's worse, is that since my first post, the entire drive has stopped appearing in disk utility when connected through FireWire. now the surviving two partitions only mount when I connect it over USB. it's a week old 500GB mobile Lacie Little Disk Sam Hecht.

Anyway, thanks, maybe i'll search for some rescue programs and try that. I really wish I could fix this somehow.

 

[heppy]

The problem is that it was writing something to the drive when you did the hard reset, or at least it was for me, something crucial on the MBR I guess which when reset caused a corruption. the data is probably still there it's just finding the right program to get at it....in my case I couldn't but I was lucky enough to have a recent backup.

 

[mongobongo]

What data recovery programs did you try? Do you know what's considered the best one? I know I might have to try a few like you did, but at least, it's a start.

 

[heppy]

I tried Disk warrior and Drive Rescue II but neither worked.